The GOP has a political and economic death-grip over Democrats
An exploding federal budget deficit can spell political trouble for the White House and opportunity for the opposition party as a presidential election approaches. But this week’s announcement that the annual deficit is expected to surpass $1 trillion for much of the coming decade may actually put more pressure on Democratic challengers than on President Trump.
It’s a sign of how much Trump’s presidency has upended the traditional economic and political philosophies of the two major parties. Now it falls to Democratic candidates vying to oust Trump to explain to voters how their policies would curb the mounting deficit — or, in the alternative, why the deficit doesn’t matter. And it’s not enough to simply point their fingers at Republicans and say, “Why should we care if they don’t?”
The budget deficit is the gap between the amount the government collects in taxes and other sources of revenue and how much it spends in any given fiscal year. That’s different from, although it adds to, the national debt, which is the nation’s cumulative unpaid balance and currently exceeds $22 trillion. The last time the federal deficit exceeded $1 trillion was in 2012, when the economy was still shaking off the effects of the last recession.
Deficits aren’t a bad thing if they’re relatively small and don’t grow faster than the U.S. economy, or if the spending is needed to offset a downturn. But operating with the current level of red ink will arguably make it harder for Congress to respond when recession strikes again. Meanwhile, an ever-larger share of the budget is being eaten up by interest payments on the accumulated debt, a problem that will become nightmarish if interest rates shoot back up to the double-digit levels of the late-1970s.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-22/trump-deficit-democratic-candidates
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